SNOWBOUND

They are forecasting another snow storm here and it might
make this the snowiest December on record for the Boston
area.

It put me in mind of "Snowbound", a poem by John Greenleaf
Whittier that I had to read at some point at St Mathew's
Parochial School in Dorchester when I was a kid. It's a long
poem, but these lines from the first verse seem to suit
how December has been this year:

"The sun that brief December day

Rose cheerless over hills of gray,

And, darkly circled, gave at noon

A sadder light than waning moon.

Slow tracing down the thickening sky

Its mute and ominous prophecy,

A portent seeming less than threat,

It sank from sight before it set.

A chill no coat, however stout,

Of homespun stuff could quite shut out,

A hard, dull bitterness of cold,

That checked, mid-vein, the circling race

Of life-blood in the sharpened face,

The coming of the snow-storm told."